1:30pm and 2:45pm Sessions
Direct care practitioners are increasingly faced with problems stemming from racial trauma – some from the standpoint of not understanding its effects and others who are themselves combating its wounds. This presentation will guide participants to define and identify racial trauma, how it differs from other traumas, and learn tools to effectively treat it within the populations they serve. Participants will also learn what constitutes “complex trauma” and its associated symptoms. Further, attendees will learn how to adapt cultural competency, how to begin the healing work, and adequately add anti-racist language within an individual’s life. They will be given proactive ways to address their biases and stereotypes and ways to avoid unintentionally re-traumatizing the various populations they serve.
About the Presenter
Yanique Grant, LCSW
School Social Worker, Capitol Region Educational Council (CREC)
Yanique Grant is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) who has been working in the field of
mental health and substance abuse since 2009. She is compassionate, empathetic, and very
passionate about her role as a therapist. Her work includes individual therapy, couples’ therapy,
group therapy, and intensive outpatient treatments. She also has a passion for
developing trainings and group curriculums centered on complex trauma. Yanique prides herself
in her experience working with individuals from culturally diverse backgrounds and being able
to identify with them in various ways.
In addition to continuing her work in the community through nonprofit agencies and in the
education system through schools, Yanique began her private practice, Courage to Be LLC, to
focus on her specialty in complex trauma. Her practice specializes in treating racial trauma, and
the effects that it has on various communities. She is also very active in her community by
engaging in various grass roots organizations and in 2020 as a response to the COVID-19
pandemic and racial turmoil, she assisted in building the CT BIPOC Mental Health and Wellness
Initiative which had hosted various free educational forums to the community on health and
mental health. Yanique is well versed in various therapeutic models and works with clients of all
backgrounds who are seeking to focus on identity work, to develop a deeper understanding of
themselves as it relates to the complexity of race, culture, and ethnicity.
Yanique holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Children’s Studies, and a Master’s degree in Social Work with a clinical concentration of Health and Mental Health in Children & Families.
